To mark the beginning of the final year of World War 1’s centenary, historian Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, whose Battle of the Somme book has just been published as a paperback, highlights how, during the lead up to that terrible day on 1 July 1916 when no less than 57,000 British soldiers fell, a brigadier from Conwy attempted to alter the attack plan devised by his reckless superior officers and to haul his brigade back from the brink.

When Hubert Rees from Conwy, recalled his time as a 34-year-old brigadier-general leading up to the massacre of British troops on 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, he was chastened by what had happened on his watch. “A great deal of optimism prevailed in all quarters,” he admitted ruefully, acknowledging the allegation that he, along with other generals, had complacently assumed that the British pre-attack bombardment would enable them to seize the German line without much of a fight.

But that did not mean he was one of the metaphorical ‘donkeys’ who had blindly led the ‘lions’, the brave young men under his command, to their death as some have alleged. In the account he wrote after the attack, he described how he had attempted to persuade his superiors to mitigate the effects of some of the worst errors contained in the attack plan: “A few days before the attack, I pointed out to General Hunter-Weston (the leader of V111 Corps who was one of Rees’ superior officers) that the assembly trenches stopped dead on the left of 94 Brigade (the formation commanded by Rees), and that not a spade had been put into ground between me and the subsidiary attack at Gommecourt (the village being attacked on Rees’ left). Worse still, no effort at wire cutting was made on that stretch either. A child could see where the flank of our attack lay to within ten yards.’ That was not all.

Brigadier-general Hubert Rees who fought at the Somme (Image: UGC)

“One of my criticisms of the general plan of operations was that the time allowed for the capture of each objective was too short. I had a severe argument with Hunter-Weston’ about this. In 20 minutes I had to capture the first four lines of trenches in front of Serre (a village behind the German front line, at the northern end of the main British attack, which stood at the top of a steep slope). After a check of twenty minutes, I was allowed forty minutes to capture Serre, a village 800 yards deep, and 20 minutes later to capture an orchard on a knoll 300 yards beyond.”

But Rees’ objections were not taken seriously. As he put it: “I was looked upon as something of a heretic for saying that everything had been arranged except for the unexpected, which usually occurs in war.” Eventually in an attempt to reach a compromise, Hunter-Weston made a derisory concession: “I induced him to give me an extra ten minutes for the capture of the orchard,” Rees recalled sardonically.

Hunter-Weston’s intransigence was strange given that it was not long since he had himself criticized the plan backed by the Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Douglas Haig. Haig had informed his generals he wanted the German front systems of trenches to be taken in a great rush, and this had prompted Hunter-Weston to object in the following terms: “I am strongly opposed to a wild rush by the advanced line of troops for an objective 4000 yards away from their trenches of departure. Even if they get over the intervening line of trenches, the remnant of the line that started cannot but arrive as a widely spread and disordered rabble, with no power to overcome even a feeble resistance in the enemy back trenches, and with but little chance of being able to maintain themselves therein.”

It seems that after more artillery was given to V111 Corps, Hunter-Weston was transformed from a rebellious critic into one of the plan’s great cheerleaders, advocating the theory that the attack would be a ‘walk over’. Notwithstanding Rees’ misgivings, as the final British bombardment of the German trenches hotted up ten minutes before zero on 1 July 1916, he climbed out of his dugout some 600 yards behind the front line to watch the spectacle he had helped to create. “It was magnificent,” he recalled later. “The trenches in front of Serre changed shape and dissolved minute by minute under the terrific hail of steel. I began to believe in the possibility of a great success.”

That was until the Germans replied in kind: “As our infantry advanced, down came a perfect wall of explosive. It was the most frightful artillery display I had seen.” According to V111 Corps’ war diary, Rees also “saw the Germans man their front line, and standing up above their parapet, fire very rapidly at our infantry. He was amazed by the bravery of these men who appeared to pay no attention to our barrage.” The result was a disaster: Rees “saw the lines which advanced in such admirable order melting away under the fire. Hardly a man of ours got to the German front line,” let alone to the village

beyond it. However the unrelenting optimism of Rees’s divisional commander, 31 Division’s Major-General Wanless O’Gowan, tempted Rees to order another doomed attack, after he was informed, incorrectly as it later turned out, that some of the 31st Division troops had reached Serre after all.

That was just one of many panic stricken claims: amongst them was the assertion that the Germans had counter attacked and were in the neighbouring brigade’s trenches, resulting in Rees being told to chase them out. “I expostulated”, Rees recalled, but only discovered that his commander agreed with him after speaking to O’Gowan directly. Rees retorted that in that case, he should be excused, so that he could countermand the attack “which you have just ordered me to make.” As Rees acknowledged, the rumours and panics were all part and parcel of the “unbalancing effect of the disaster”, which had seen 31st Division’s two assaulting brigades’ casualties rise to approaching 3,500 men, including approximately 1,500 who had either been killed or were missing, a number which might have been considerably reduced if he had had his way.